The students, from 18 different courses at the Nova Scotia Community College Truro campus, closed one door and opened another.

“I’m nervous and excited, but feeling rewarded,” said Caitlin Giles, who was graduating from the one-year medical office administration program. “But we had the most incredible teacher ever in June Skinner.”

Giles, from Great Village, was holding onto a flower from a loved one before the ceremony even started. She was surrounded by her friends, including Mallory Fortune of Brookfield and Kemptown’s Shawna Harvey. Thanks to them, her nervousness started to subside.

“Our experience here has been so much fun,” said Fortune. “It’s been very rewarding. Hard work does pay off and I would recommend NSCC over university – we’re a family now.”

For 19-year-old Devin Handspiker-Wade, he couldn’t stop grinning once finally walking out with his diploma.

“Relief,” was the word he used to describe his feelings following the two-hour ceremony. “The biggest obstacle of my programming was time – it was a lot of time crunching.”

The Lawrencetown native graduated from the IT web program and already has a web development job lined up with Cossette East in Halifax.

“My experience with the people here was great,” he said. “The instructors were really awesome.”

Campus president Kevin Quinlan presided over his final graduation ceremony after 38 years in the post-secondary education system. For the past 13 years, he’s been principal on the campus, but is retiring in December.

“There was a little bit of mixed emotions,” Quinlan said about sitting on the stage for the ceremony. “In 38 years I’ve been through 38 graduations in post-secondary education, and it will be different next year.”

The principal admitted emotions were starting to surface when college president Don Bureaux was acknowledging the work Quinlan has done over the years.

“Those were some deep learning moments, and by deep learning I mean there are times when we can’t contain those emotions.”

There are four emotions, said Quinlan, that one can’t control – laughter, crying, blushing and paling.

“When one of those happens, I know it’s coming from deep within,” he said.